Condition: Very Good: A book that has been read but is in excellent condition. No obvious damage to the cover, ... Very Good: A book that has been read but is in excellent condition. No obvious damage to the cover, with the dust jacket included for hard covers. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. May be very minimal identifying marks on the inside cover. Very minimal wear and tear. See all condition definitionsopens in a new window or tab

ISBN: 9780679427728

About this product

Product Identifiers

Publisher

Random House Publishing Group

ISBN-10

0679427724

ISBN-13

9780679427728

eBay Product ID (ePID)

1526109

Product Key Features

Book Title

Shakey : Neil Young's Biography

Number of Pages

800 Pages

Language

English

Topic

Composers & Musicians, Entertainment & Performing Arts

Publication Year

2002

Illustrator

Yes

Genre

Biography & Autobiography

Author

Jimmy Mcdonough

Format

Hardcover

Dimensions

Item Height

1.6 in

Item Weight

39.6 Oz

Item Length

9.5 in

Item Width

6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended Audience

Trade

LCCN

2001-043528

Dewey Edition

Reviews

"Most people did their best work when they were younger. Neil Young is as good as he ever was, which is quite an accomplishment.... I don't know if you could name anybody better who came out of rock & roll." -- Randy Newman "For someone like me, who loves Neil Young's music with a deep and abiding passion â€¦ Jimmy McDonough's fat, teeming, obsessive and revelatory biography of Young is a pure shot of all-access pleasure." --LA Times "As the music journalist Jimmy McDonough makes clear inShakey, his exhaustive, quarrelsome and sometimes maddening biography, it's never wise to presume to understand this complicated artistâ€¦. Fans thirsty for the melancholy hues of Neil Young will not be disappointed: He avoids lights! He drinks tequila all night long! Songs are recorded in one take! Songs are made up on the spot!â€¦. Part of the uncanny shrewdness of Neil Young, never more apparent than in the nearly 800 pages ofShakey, is the evasion." --The New York Times Book Review "Inconsistent? Eccentric? You bet. McDonough's Neil Young is a reclusive loner in flannel shirt and workboots, a stubborn changeling and zing-zag wanderer whose erratic genius and pursuit of the muse has made him a potent force in popular music for 35 years at the same time as he's left lovers, business associates, friends and fellow musicians puzzled, angry and disillusionedâ€¦. The Neil Young inShakeyâ€¦ is finally an impossible, even ridiculous man. Impossible to predict, impossible to categorize, impossible to unreservedly love, perhaps, but just as impossible to really hate. Even more than Sinatra, he's done it his way on the human highway." --The Globe and Mail "McDonough spent a decade writing his semi-authorized tome, the first three years just trying to get Young to talk. Even then it was like meeting Brando's Kurtz in a cave at the end ofApocalypse Now. McDonough, 42, has taken the trip upriver for every journalist who ever had a notion to interview Neil, and after reading the exhaustive results, I can only say better him than meâ€¦. Young comes across as a Jekyll-and-Hyde loner whose life has unfolded like a reckless chemistry experiment -- a control freak on an endless quest for the uncontrolled momentâ€¦. Displaying an obsessive zeal that matches his subject's, McDonough traces every step, and misstep, of Young's life in staggering detail. [Shakey] offers a motherlode of fascinating detail, especially about the circus of characters around Young." --Maclean's "The thrill of McDonough's breezy, anecdotal prose is that it sheds meaningful light into every cranny where it chooses to snoopâ€¦. With its rotating cast of characters,Shakeypresents Neli Young's messy, brilliant, erratic story with humour, sadness and big, greasy dollops of truth -- a rarity in the "official biography" genreâ€¦. a worthwhile read for fan or foe alike." --The Ottawa Citizen "â€¦a meticulously detailed and thoughtful book that sidesteps the sort of robotic adulation and self-censorship that often drags down rock biographies." --The Toronto Sun "Despite there being a virtual cottage industry in Young books in recents years, McDonough's access to the man himself, along with his tenacious research, renders [Shakey] the definitive volume. McDonough crafts an engrossing portrait of a man whose obsession and focus turned to megalomania." --Winnipeg Free Press "For Young, authenticity is all, and more than any previous b, "Most people did their best work when they were younger. Neil Young is as good as he ever was, which is quite an accomplishment.... I don't know if you could name anybody better who came out of rock & roll." -- Randy Newman "For someone like me, who loves Neil Young's music with a deep and abiding passion â€¦ Jimmy McDonough's fat, teeming, obsessive and revelatory biography of Young is a pure shot of all-access pleasure." -- LA Times "As the music journalist Jimmy McDonough makes clear in Shakey, his exhaustive, quarrelsome and sometimes maddening biography, it's never wise to presume to understand this complicated artistâ€¦. Fans thirsty for the melancholy hues of Neil Young will not be disappointed: He avoids lights! He drinks tequila all night long! Songs are recorded in one take! Songs are made up on the spot!â€¦. Part of the uncanny shrewdness of Neil Young, never more apparent than in the nearly 800 pages of Shakey, is the evasion." -- The New York Times Book Review "Inconsistent? Eccentric? You bet. McDonough's Neil Young is a reclusive loner in flannel shirt and workboots, a stubborn changeling and zing-zag wanderer whose erratic genius and pursuit of the muse has made him a potent force in popular music for 35 years at the same time as he's left lovers, business associates, friends and fellow musicians puzzled, angry and disillusionedâ€¦. The Neil Young in Shakey â€¦ is finally an impossible, even ridiculous man. Impossible to predict, impossible to categorize, impossible to unreservedly love, perhaps, but just as impossible to really hate. Even more than Sinatra, he's done it his way on the human highway." -- The Globe and Mail "McDonough spent a decade writing his semi-authorized tome, the first three years just trying to get Young to talk. Even then it was like meeting Brando's Kurtz in a cave at the end of Apocalypse Now. McDonough, 42, has taken the trip upriver for every journalist who ever had a notion to interview Neil, and after reading the exhaustive results, I can only say better him than meâ€¦. Young comes across as a Jekyll-and-Hyde loner whose life has unfolded like a reckless chemistry experiment -- a control freak on an endless quest for the uncontrolled momentâ€¦. Displaying an obsessive zeal that matches his subject's, McDonough traces every step, and misstep, of Young's life in staggering detail. [Shakey] offers a motherlode of fascinating detail, especially about the circus of characters around Young." -- Maclean's "The thrill of McDonough's breezy, anecdotal prose is that it sheds meaningful light into every cranny where it chooses to snoopâ€¦. With its rotating cast of characters, Shakey presents Neli Young's messy, brilliant, erratic story with humour, sadness and big, greasy dollops of truth -- a rarity in the "official biography" genreâ€¦. a worthwhile read for fan or foe alike." -- The Ottawa Citizen "â€¦a meticulously detailed and thoughtful book that sidesteps the sort of robotic adulation and self-censorship that often drags down rock biographies." -- The Toronto Sun "Despite there being a virtual cottage industry in Young books in recents years, McDonough's access to the man himself, along with his tenacious research, renders [Shakey] the definitive volume. McDonough crafts an engrossing portrait of a man whose obsession and focus turned to megalomania." -- Winnipeg Free Press "For Young, authenticity is all, and more than

Dewey Decimal

782.42166/092 B

Synopsis

"You can't go along from people to people, place to place, creating, changing, without hurting a lot of people. How can you do that? Can you think of an answer? I think I'm going a good job--even though it's painful sometimes." Neil Young is one of rock and roll's most important, influential and enigmatic figures, an intensely reticent artist who has granted no writer access to his inner sanctum--until now. In Shakey, Jimmy McDonough tells the whole story of Young's incredible life and career: from his childhood in Canada to his cofounding of the pioneering folk-rock group Buffalo Springfield; to the bleary conglomeration of Crazy Horse and simultaneous monstrous success of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young; to the depraved depths of Tonight's the Night and the strange changes of the Geffen years; to Young's unprecedented nineties "comeback" with Ragged Glory and Harvest Moon. McDonough spent six years doggedly pursuing rock's most elusive quarry, talking to more than three hundred of Young's associates (many of whom spoke freely for the first time), as well as sitting down with Young in person for more than fifty hours of interviews. This long-awaited, unprecedented story of a rock and roll legend is filled with never-before-published words directly from the artist himself: -on heroin: "I didn't see any reason to try it. I never shot up anything... I guess after I wrote a couple songs about it, then people who might've offered it...didn't." -on abruptly firing Crazy Horse to record with Pearl Jam: "That happens over and over again through my whole fuckin' life with all these bands. That's the reason I'm still here. Because as painful as it is to change--and as ruthless as I may seem to be in what I have to do to keep going--you gotta do what ya gotta do. Just like a fuckin' vampire. Heh heh heh." -on himself: "Look around me-I'm a fuckin' capitalist businessman! I've got all this shit. I'm a good businessman, right?" By his own admission, Young has left behind "a lotta destruction....a big wake" in achieving his dreams, and for the first time he addresses that subject in painful details. Shakey-titled after one of Young's' many aliases, Bernard Shakey-is not only a detailed chronicle of the rock era told through the life of one very idiosyncratic, uncompromising artist, but a compelling human story as well: that of a loner for whom music was the only outlet, a driven yet tortured figure who learned to control epilepsy via "mind over matter." It's also about an oddly passionate model-train mogul who, inspired by his own son's struggle with cerebral palsy, became a major activist in the quest to help others with that condition. The story is uniquely told in McDonough's interwoven voices--those of biographer, critic, historian, obsessive fan--and by the ever cantankerous Young himself, who puts his biographer through some unforgettable paces while answering the perennial question Is it better to burn out than to fade away?

LC Classification Number

ML420.Y75M33 2002

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Shakey: Neil Young's Biography by McDonough, James - Very Good

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